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Economist says placements remains the number to watch in Cattle on Feed report

A livestock economist says placements will be the number to watch in this week’s Cattle on Feed report. Josh Maples with Mississippi State University Extension says, “We’re going into this report on the heels of 15 straight months of declining feedlot numbers.” 

He says that isn’t going to change anytime soon. “We had a little bit of weather to deal with in February,” he says.  “Do we see that show up in the report? Placements during January were about 5% below a year ago. So, we’ve got some big question marks.”

Maples tells Brownfield the border remains closed to live cattle imports from Mexico because of the ongoing threat of New World screwworm. “Nothing is happening there,” he says. “And when I mean nothing happening, I mean no cattle coming in. So that automatically reduces placements, especially in the southern part of the U.S.” 

Pre-report estimates have placements, nearly steady on the year, up 0.3%.  On Feed expectations are down nearly a percent (0.7%) and marketings are expected to decline more than 7.5%.

The report comes out Friday at 3pm Eastern/2pm Central.